Four Years (1461 Devastating Days)

 Four years without Daniel, of living every day with a broken heart, of sorrow, of missing your child more than words can say, of not telling anyone how you really feel because you know it will upset them, so you bury it deep inside yourself where it silently destroys you.

Our Angel Our Star

Danny's funeral was today, three years ago. How I can hardly bear to write these words or to rationally think about the reality of what I am saying, that Daniel is dead, that we had a funeral for him and that he is lifeless buried l in a grave.

The paragraph to follow are from a book about a family who also lost their youngest child and brother, When a child dies by Jim O'Shea, the words could have been my own:

As they lowered the coffin into the earth I put my arms around my family. I wanted to protect them from the brutality of death, to assuage their pain. But nothing could ease that pain, as the dark earth claimed their young brother.

Mama, Neni, Lecia and Daniel. The bond that holds us close and the love that we share can never be broken, no time or distance or death will ever come between us. Our love will always be dearest Daniel. Precious Pikkewyntjie. Our Angel. Our Star.

Little Bird

My Daniel

A little bird, a hole in my heart, an emptiness that cannot describe or understand, it feels so long and also so short. I miss you my Angel. Every moment of my life and with every breath I take. You know, I know. My tears. My sorrow. My wish that losing you wasn't true. A hopelessness and heartache too much to bear but somehow I do. I love you. I love you so much, as always and forever, my Daniel. Pikkewyntjie.

Mama xxx

Two Years

My Danny

To me you are something of unusual beauty unlike most everyone. Like serenity incarnate. But I need to touch beautiful things to know they are real. Sometimes I worry I dreamed you, and that I am so much less free. You are like faith and air and freedom and my small hours seem mostly to be yours.

What I feel for you flows through all that is and my love for you is greater than life itself.

Missing you more and more, as it will be.

Mamma xxx

Wrong

I want to repost this comment that Cathy has left on my previous post "Want Daniel" because she sees losing Daniel like I see it: the most wrong thing in the world and she sees how it is for me to live with this cruel injustice. She is right, it is hell.

Thank you Cathy for knowing and for letting me use your words as my voice:

I don't know how anyone is expected to bear it, how anyone CAN bear it. And yet life forces itself on somehow, even if we are only enduring it.

I so mourn that your Daniel is not in your arms. His pictures, his eyes - I always think, it is the most wrong thing in the world that your child has been ripped from you.

It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis quote: "The cold, unsmiling face of Hell." Daniel's death seems a picture of what Hell must be. I should say, of what Hell IS, because you are having to live through it every day.

I realize not everyone believes in Hell. All I know is, Daniel being taken from you has forced you to live there.

(This week, two more people mentioned that they didn't believe Daniel's death was as accidental as it is made out to be. They don't know each other and have nothing in common. But the reason behind their doubts was the same. Should I react in any way? I don't know. I also have the same concerning questions. But for now, I just close my eyes, try not to think, pray and hope with every fibre of my being that Daniel's death was an accident and that everything possible was done to save his life.)

Want Daniel

I feel so very very sad about Daniel since last Sunday (more sad than I have felt in a long long time). It is a terrible sadness because it is so clear and without hope. Just an empty reality that he will never come back, that life has continued for nearly two years, that I will probably never find the answers that I desperately seek, that I will never heal.

Soon it will be December and January - the months to remind me of all that I wish never happened.

Sorrow

From: All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
 

"She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow."

How We Live

From : Sputnik Sweetheart (Haruki Murakami)

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness."

Finding Me

I feel deeply touched by this beautiful drawing that my friend Michael did for me. We are on the same painful journey and feel a similar pain - Michael lost his son Luke around the same time that I lost Daniel. (Also see my post Luke's Army)

I cannot describe how much I still miss Daniel every day. My heart pains for my child and without end a thousand unanswered questions keep on circling through my mind. I wonder if I would ever find peace...

Cry Ever Tear

From: I wrote this for you

When hurt turns red and a piece of your heart is missing. When the cold bites deep and you’ve got that feeling like you just got out of surgery. When the only way to stay sane is to concentrate on anything else but how you feel. When you count the tiles in the ceiling. When you push the earphones closer. When the first day of winter arrives. When you remember every nuance of every word of every time. When all this happens. Embrace it. Feel every feeling. Cry every tear. Sob every sob. Because this is what it feels like to have loved.

Too Young To Die

I wish I knew that Daniel had a father who would a betray the love, admiration and trust of his son in the worst, most severe way possible but I didn’t know that. I believed that Daniel was safe at his father’s house, that they are taking care of him without fail, that he was as precious to his father as he was to me.

Daniel died while he was visiting his Dad. There are so many contradicting versions of what really happened that day. I have many unanswered questions and a strong feeling of unease about the alleged sequence of events. There are however some sure facts:
Daniel drowned in their swimming pool

The pool is unfenced and was left open without cover or safety net

Daniel was alone outside or he was on his own inside the house with free access to the pool
His dad wasn't at home after specifically asking me to fetch Daniel in the afternoon oppose to the morning as he wanted to spend the day with his son.

When Daniel’s father and his wife eventually arrived with Daniel at the hospital, my son was already dead

His dad called me at work crying, telling me that something terrible has happened, that we have lost Daniel. The phone call that no parent ever want to receive. A few seconds, a few words and my life changed forever.

I live in a different town and the 2 hour drive to get to the hospital felt like days. It was an emergency for me to get there as soon as possible as in my heart I believed that there was still something I, as his mother could do to bring him back to life.

At the hospital I walked into the room where Daniel was laying – on his own only covered by a thin sheet. He was perfect and beautiful but so cold and I went to ask for a blanket to put over him.

I kissed him, stroked his hair, comforted him with my words and presence. I was filled with a complexity of feelings, all mixed up, a very intense painful strange combination of disbelief, anger, sadness, hopelessness, unreality, physical pain, devastation, confusion.
The day when Daniel died.